Detailed description (English): Current mobility patterns are dominated by individual car use. How can we stimulate people to change their mobility behaviour and opt for other means of transport? One of the elements most citizens mention as a critical barrier to change, is the lack of adequate public transport (PT) options, both in terms of access to stops, frequency of the routes and flexibility and easiness of the interchanges. Seeking for alternatives to individual car use by relying on public transport alone, in fact, often imposes lengthy walks to/from PT stops followed by convoluted and time-consuming multi-leg journeys, which are not convincing as viable alternatives to door-to-door car routes. Alternatives such as car-pooling or ride sharing are instead gaining popularity, though they are not always available, since matches between demanded and offered trips are not always easy to be found.
In such a framework, the research project SocialCar overcomes the traditional competition between modes of transport, envisioning instead a fruitful collaboration among them: it develops the integration between public transport and car-pooling services, exploiting real time traffic data and automatically processing them by artificial intelligence algorithms. The related mobility services are offered by means of a smartphone app, called RideMyRoute, which allows planning, booking and payment for multi-modal trips, combining rides offered by other citizens with regular public transport.
As important as development of the technological component of the SocialCar/RideMyRoute mobility service (the app) is the involvement of citizens, who are called to both offer carpooling rides and to ask for them. To investigate the level of public acceptance of the new mobility service before offering it on the market, we run a large-scale field test, involving four different European sites: the cities of Brussels, Edinburgh and Ljubljana and Canton Ticino in Southern Switzerland.
RideMyRoute will be launched in Canton Ticino during EUROPEAN MOBILITY WEEK 2017 and citizens will be invited to join the field test, which will run for one month, until the end of October 2017.
Results of such field tests will allow us to understand if, beyond the RideMyRoute prototype developed within the SocialCar research project, possibilities for future commercial exploitation are available, so as to permanently integrate RideMyRoute among the mobility options in Canton Ticino and in the other European partner cities.
Detailed description (original language): Il nostro stile di mobilità è dominato dall’uso individuale dell’automobile. Come stimolare i cittadini a modificare le proprie scelte di mobilità e a scegliere altri mezzi di trasporto? Una delle più diffuse barriere al cambiamento è l’assenza di un trasporto pubblico di qualità (frequenza delle corse, facilità di accesso alle fermate, flessibilità e rapidità degli interscambi). E, in effetti, in molti casi alternative realistiche all’uso dell’auto non esistono.
Proprio partendo da queste considerazioni, SocialCar ribalta la prospettiva tradizionale, puntando sull’integrazione di mezzi di trasporto, invece che sulla loro competizione. L’obiettivo del progetto è sviluppare un’app per smartphone che favorisca l’integrazione tra carpooling (la condivisione di passaggi in auto tra privati) e il trasporto pubblico. A questo scopo, abbiamo sviluppato modelli matematici che favoriscono l’incrocio tra la domanda e offerta di spostamenti, tenendo conto di qualsiasi mezzo di trasporto. La flessibilità dell’auto si unisce quindi ai vantaggi offerti dal trasporto pubblico, creando un nuovo modo di spostarsi efficientemente da un luogo all’altro.
In parallelo alla sperimentazione in tre grandi città europee (Bruxelles, Edimburgo e Lubiana), tra settembre e ottobre 2017 il sistema RideMyRoute sarà testato sul campo anche in Ticino, sotto il coordinamento di SUPSI e Planidea SA. Nella SETTIMANA EUROPEA DELLA MOBILITÀ il sistema RideMyRoute sarà presentato ai cittadini, che saranno invitati a sperimentarlo sul campo, per un mese . Il risultato di questo test consentirà di capire se, al di là del prototipo sviluppato nel progetto di ricerca, RideMyRoute possa evolvere per integrare in modo permanente l'offerta di mobilità in Canton Ticino.
Target group(s): General citizens either living, working or studying in Canton Ticino (Lugano area).
Objectives: Goal of our action is to test real life effectiveness of a new mobility service, called RideMyRoute.
It is based on a smartphone app, developed within an H2020 European research project. The new mobility service is being tested in the same period in four different locations in Europe: Brussels, Edinburgh, Ljubljana and Canton Ticino.
We will assess both the number of users of the new mobility service, in a quantitative fashion, but will also investigate qualitative aspects, such as its strengths and weaknesses, and also opportunities and constraints related to the mobility context.
Expected Outcomes: We expect the real life test demonstrates effectiveness of the RideMyRoute mobility service in reducing car traffic and the related environmental and climatic impacts. If the field test results in a positive outcome, we expect RideMyRoute gets out of the research prototype step, to become a commercial product, thanks to investments by public transport and carpooling companies that followed evolution of the project.
Partner: Planidea SA (Canobbio, Switzerland) is the local partner coordinating the field test with us.
All the activities are being developed under the general framework of the SocialCar H2020 project, under coordination of FIT Consulting (Rome, Italy).